popular protest, than he ever has been. And there is this danger in many
of those who have answered me. One of them, for instance, says that women
have been forced into their present industrial situations by the same iron
economic laws that have compelled men. I say that men have not been
compelled by iron economic laws, but in the main by the coarse and
Christless cynicism of other men. But, of course, this way of talking is
exactly in accordance with the fashionable and official version of English
history. Thus, you will read that the monasteries, places where men of
the poorest origin could be powerful, grew corrupt and gradually decayed.
Or you will read that the mediaeval guilds of free workmen yielded at last
to an inevitable economic law. You will read this; and you will be
reading lies. They might as well say that Julius Caesar gradually
decayed at the foot of Pompey's statue. You might as well say that
Abraham Lincoln yielded at last to an inevitable economic law. The free
mediaeval guilds did not decay; they were murdered. Solid men with solid
guns and halberds, armed with lawful warrants from living statesmen broke
up their corporations and took away their hard cash from them. In the
same way the people in Cradley Heath are no more victims of a necessary
economic law than the people in Putumayo. They are victims of a very
terrible creature, of whose sins much has been said since the beginning of
the world; and of whom it was said of old, "Let us fall into the hands of
God, for His mercies are great; but let us not fall into the hands of Man."


The Capitalist Is in the Dock

Now it is this offering of a false economic excuse for the sweater that is
the danger in perpetually saying that the poor woman will use the vote and
that the poor man has not used it. The poor man is prevented from using
it; prevented by the rich man, and the poor woman would be prevented in